Craigellachie's whole character sits in its cheapest bottle

Craigellachie is one of the few Speysiders that never softened. It keeps a sturdy, savoury, slightly sulphured character in its spirit, a waxy, muscular core with a run of exotic fruit over the top, where most of its neighbours long ago smoothed themselves into something gentler. You either take to that or you don't, and the sensible way to find out is cheap rather than dear. Three bottles are on the shelf, and the useful fact before you spend is that the entire signature of the place is already present in the least expensive one. The money above it buys years in a cask. It does not buy more of what makes this whisky itself.

So begin at the foot of the range. The 13 Year Old is $111, and the model sets its ten nearest comparisons at a median of $114, which leaves it a few dollars shy of the going rate for its type. That peer figure is a statistic summarising comparable bottles, not a tag anyone charges. This is also the glass that explains the distillery. Rich and sweet, caramel wrapped around a citrus-peel sharpness, grapefruit and a tropical-fruit note, with the savoury weight underneath that marks it out from the polite end of Speyside. If the brand's reputation has never quite made sense to you, this is the bottle that makes it, and it is priced as though the distillery would sooner win you over cheaply than ask you to take its reputation on trust.

The 19 Year Old is the middle step, at $376 against a peer median of $360. That is about $16 over, roughly 5 percent, a slim premium for the extra six years in wood. The profile fills out as it ages: the same sweet, fruited core, drier now, the fruit gone from fresh to baked, a crisp toasted edge and a chocolate depth settling behind it. For anyone who warmed to the 13 and wants a weightier version for the cabinet, 5 percent over the odds is fair rather than exciting, and fair is a fine result at this age. A note on that figure, though: the model's set of comparisons here is unusually broad, so read the gap as a direction, not a precise number.

Then the 23 Year Old, where the sums change character entirely. It is $800. The model reads its ten nearest peers at a median of $386, which puts the shelf roughly $414 clear of what comparable whiskies of its kind command, a touch over double the going rate, about 107 percent more. The tasting is lovely in the way very old Speyside tends to be: spiced and ripe, dried fruit, a wisp of peat smoke, maple and a silky finish. But loveliness is not really the question this far up, and the figure I keep landing on is that $414. Its comparison band is wide too, so take the number as a direction rather than a decimal. Even read generously, it points the same way: you are paying a heavy premium for age and scarcity here, not a keen price for good whisky.

Set the three together and the pattern is clean. The brand's mid-shelf sits near a median of $376, so Craigellachie reads as a premium name before you even choose a bottle. The premium is just shared out very unevenly: nearly nothing at the 13, a sliver at the 19, a great deal at the 23. And the thing that makes the whisky worth seeking out, that savoury, fruited, faintly sulphured signature, is whole in the cheapest bottle and does not deepen as the price climbs. It merely grows older.

So what goes in the basket. For almost everyone, the 13 at $111. It carries the full personality of the distillery, it comes in under its peers rather than over, and it is the one bottle here that rewards curiosity without asking you to wager serious money. Pour it for someone convinced Speyside means safe and watch the idea fall over. If you already love the style and want it older and richer for the special-occasions shelf, the 19 at $376 adds the years without much of a fashion tax, as long as you treat its gap as the rough figure it is. The 23 is a luxury buy and should be approached as one: because you want a very old Craigellachie and the price genuinely is not the deciding factor, not in any hope of value against its neighbours. On that score the room is blunt that there is none to be had.

The cheering part, for anyone who simply wants to drink well, is that the whole identity of this place is on show at the front of the shelf, not locked behind the trophy bottle. Buy the 13, share it with a sceptic, and leave the old releases for whoever has the money to indulge.